Radon Mitigation

Radon in Your Home

Radon is an invisible, odorless gas that is a natural radioactive decay product of uranium, a common element in soil and rocks. Radon gas is considered harmless when dispersed in outdoor air but can be a serious health hazard when trapped in buildings.

How Radon Enters Your Home

Radon gas can seep into a home from the soil through dirt crawlspaces, cracks in the foundation and walls, floor drains, pipes and sump pumps. Radon can enter any home, old or new, even those with no visible cracks. Each building is unique, and the ground beneath it is also unique. Two houses side-by-side can have totally different radon levels. The only way to know what the radon levels are inside your home is to measure them.
Radon also can enter a home through the well water. If your water contains high levels of radon, the radon gas escapes into the household air when the water is running. The EPA says, “The radon in your water supply poses an inhalation risk and an ingestion risk. Research has shown that your risk of lung cancer from breathing radon in air is much larger than your risk of stomach cancer from swallowing water with radon in it.”

EPA Radon Zone Map

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publishes Radon Zone Maps to diagram the radon status of counties throughout the United States. Keep in mind that a Zone 1 rating (high potential) is not indicative of a radon problem, and a Zone 3 rating (low potential) does not guarantee that their home is free of radon.

Health Risks Caused By Radon

Radon gas is the number one environmental hazard in the U.S. It can be inhaled into the lungs, where a radioactive decay process causes the release of alpha particles. These particles can harm lung tissues by damaging the DNA, and the damaged DNA can lead to lung cancer. In fact, radon exposure is second only to cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer deaths in the U.S., causing an estimated 21,000 lung cancer deaths annually.

There are considerable biological and epidemiological evidence and data showing the connection between exposure to radon and lung cancer in humans. For this reason, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, and the US Department of Health and Human Services have classified radon as a Class A human carcinogen.